I told Liverpool I was honoured...it was just too soon
But now Frank de Boer IS ready to manage here
ONa field amid the swamplands of Grootebroek in North Holland, two boys spend their summer holidays playing Doel-Doel (Goal-Goal).
There are two goals and only two touches are allowed, one to control or save and the other to shoot. For hours they try to outwit each other. The boys look identical so it isn’t always easy to follow who wins, but it is usually the one who kicks with his left foot.
Twenty summers later and in the searing heat of Marseille, the twin brothers again share a pitch, this time in a World Cup quarter-final. The left-footed boy is by now the captain of Holland, who are drawing 1-1 with Argentina. There are 30 seconds remaining. He steps out of defence, measures a 50-yard pass and drops the ball on to the boot of a team-mate who scores one of the best goals in the cup’s history. Holland win 2-1.
‘I was only able to make that pass because I had been doing it my whole life,’ says Frank de Boer, who watched Dennis Bergkamp finish in typically sublime fashion in 1998.
‘Playing Doel-Doel with my brother Ronald, if he was stranded on halfway, I had to get it over him to score, you had to be accurate over a long distance. But it was also like Dennis had Velcro on his feet. My quality as a passer and his quality as a finisher, it really was just the most perfect goal.’
De Boer, now 46, uses coffee cups and salt shakers to recreate the moment over breakfast in a west London hotel. His point is this — practice makes perfect.
With force, he announces: ‘I ask my players, “How are you going to score from a free-kick if you don’t practise?” You might get lucky one time, but you should hit 50 balls over the wall every day. It’s about being the best you can be.’
De Boer’s quest for perfection is the motivation behind his current break from management, much like the oneyear sabbatical Pep Guardiola enjoyed between Barcelona and Bayern Munich.
He won a record four straight titles at Ajax but stood down last May before an illfated 85-day reign at Inter Milan, which ended in November.
‘Leaving Ajax after 25 years as player, coach and manager was hard, but sometimes you need a new challenge, like Pep,’ he says.
‘But at Inter I had to deal with so many things, you lose energy. Every time you thought, “Finally, a good result, everything has calmed down”, then comes Mauro Icardi’s book (in which he criticised the club’s fans) or Marcelo Brozovic is in the discotheque and you have to punish him. It was three months but felt like a year.’
A Rangers fan interrupts to ask if De Boer — who played alongside his brother for the Glasgow club in 2004 — wants to return as manager. It isn’t the only request he has fielded recently. Hull and Swansea made contact, and there were offers from Liverpool in 2012 and NewcastleNe castle in 2015 2015. ‘I would ould love to manage here,’ he says, ‘but the project has to be right. I told Liverpool I was honoured but I was only one year in at Ajax, it was too soon. I needed to achieve more, and I did.’
De Boerlives in Amsterdam. He is married to Helen, whom he met on a camping trip at 15. She is the daughter of former Ajax star Arnold van Haren and the couple have three daughters.
‘She is my first and only love,’ he says. ‘Footballers are very popular and it’s very easy to go out hunting. You have to stand strong in your relationship.’
De Boer, capped 112 times by his country, did not leave Ajax until he was 28. He had won five Dutch titles and the Champions League before joining Spanish giants Barcelona in a £22million deal which also included Ronald.
HaveHa e the they al alwaysa s done e everyer thing together? ‘Pretty much,’ he smiles. Father, Cees, was a footballer with Alkmaar, and De Boer reveals for the first time the family tragedy with shaped the brothers’ destiny.
‘We have a sister but also had another older sister who died in her cot after three days,’ he says.
‘Maybe after two children my parents would say that is enough. Maybe that was fate for us.’
De Boer the football man is intense — his humour is subtle — but there is a warmth about his recollection of his childhood.
‘We have video of us kicking a ball as toddlers and our father was goalkeeper,’ he adds. ‘Our first game was at seven. We went on our bikes and we were nervous.
‘We started in the fifth team. I scored five, Ronald scored five, we won 10-0! Next game we played for the thirds, then the firsts.’ So who was better? ‘Ronald was actually the defender and I was a left winger!’ he says. ‘So they always said me because I scored all the goals.
‘Our father inspired us. If you were sitting on the couch he’d say, “What are you doing? Go outside and play football”.
‘We used the garage door, one was keeper, the other shooting. It made an awful noisei when you scored — maybe he regretted sending us out!
‘I realise now how much it helped having each other — you could always practise. We were always together and he is my best friend.’
They were by each other’s side as Ajax lifted the Champions League in 1995 thanks to Patrick Kluivert’s late goal to beat Milan.
After winning the World Club Cup in Tokyo six months later, the De Boer brothers, Edwin van der Sar, Jari Litmanen and Danny Blind spoke on the flight home of keeping the team together and winning multiple European titles.
‘Then came the Bosman ruling and everything collapsed,’ says De Boer, who admits the Champions League win was the highlight of his career.
There is, however, regret. Again we journey back to the summer of 1998. After victory over Argentina, Holland were beaten on penalties by Brazil in the semi-final. Even now after all this time De Boer is agitated, almost angry. ‘Our team was as good as the great Holland sides of ’74 and ’78,’ he declares.
‘I watched the game recently. I analysed it tactically, we were so good — Jaap Stam and me in defence, Bergkamp, Kluivert, Marc Overmars, Edgar Davids in midfield. If we’d realised we could have been champions, then we would have been.
‘I played at Euro 92 and USA 94. I remember nothing about them. But I had a fantastic feeling in ’98. I wanted to show everyone what I was about and I was voted the tournament’s best defender.
‘If we had that focus as a team — not just as individuals — then you can achieve great things. Like the penalties, too many thought, “It’s OK to lose against Brazil”.
‘We were good enough to win that World Cup, we just realised it too late.’
He is equally scathing of his time at Barca, five seasons which brought just one La Liga title.
‘We didn’t have a fantastic team, we had fantastic players — Rivaldo, Luis Figo, Kluivert, Guardiola,’ he says.
‘ But not everyone realised that you also have to work hard to win.’
‘Sometimes you need a new challenge, like Guardiola did’